A Market Town of Magdeburg Character on the Neisse River

In the Middle Ages, Guben/Gubin belonged to the most important towns in Lower Lusatia. From the point of view of legal history, a privilege for the town dating back to 1235, which was granted to the town by Margrave Heinrich of Meißen, is particularly noteworthy. In it, the prince conceded to his citizens of Guben the application of Magdeburg law, among other things: Jus enim tale, quale Magdeburgenses habent.[1] At that time, the town was already an important transshipment point for salt, which came mainly from the central German region around Halle an der Saale and was frequently reloaded in Guben from carts onto ships that traveled on the Neisse and Oder Rivers. In this context, according to the mentioned document, Margrave Heinrich allowed the people of Guben to levy a duty at the place where the salt wagons (currus salis) stopped. Lucrative market and traffic relations had developed for the town of Guben around this important trading center. An early example dates back as early as 1211, when the Silesian Duke Henry I granted the monastery of Leubus (Lubiąż), located on the Oder River, the right to pass through his dominion free of customs duties with two ships annually in order to reach Guben, Leubus and Pomerania. From this, it can be concluded that the Leubus monks satisfied part of their salt requirements in Guben. It is also interesting that 40 wagons were allowed to be used for its transport instead of ships.[2]

Fig. 1: View of the town of Guben (postcard from the 1910s). The former old town of Guben/Gubin now belongs to the Republic of Poland. The Brandenburg Guben developed from the old monastery suburb on the German side.

Guben was not only a port of call for foreign shippers and carriers. The local citizens themselves conducted a lively trade, in which shipping played an essential role. This required a targeted appropriation of rights by the Guben council regarding the rivers Neisse and Oder. Against this background, it is worth mentioning a town law confirmation document of Duke Bolko II of Schweidnitz-Jauer from 1367, to which a document of the Thuringian landgrave Dietrich IV is inserted. The latter, in turn, contained even older regulations of a document issued before 1288 by Margrave Heinrich von Meißen. According to the text of the document, he had granted Guben the right to sail “mit eigen schiffen off. der Odir”[3]  (“with its own ships off the Oder”). Hereby the Gubeners were expressly exempted from the customs in Fürstenberg, which lies about halfway in the direction of Frankfurt directly on the Oder and which, like Guben, is presumably a foundation of Margrave Heinrich.[4] If the Gubeners sailed down the Oder with foreign ships, they had, however, to pay half of the usual customs duty. The Guben city council had these customs rights confirmed by Margrave Johann von Brandenburg and Duchess Anna von Breslau in 1316. Both issued a corresponding mandate to the Fürstenberg customs officer Henymanno Messow, according to which he was not allowed to burden the Gubeners with demands est ab antiquo, i.e. from time immemorial.[5]

Via these rights, the citizens of Guben participated extensively in the trade on the Oder, which led in the direction of Stettin. On this way, another important customs post had to be passed, where Guben also received privileges. This concerned the place Oderberg, where the citizens of Guben were supposed to pay the same customs duties as the citizens of Frankfurt by a privilege of Margrave Jost of Moravia in 1401, in which there were obviously advantages. In addition to grain, the Guben shippers exported wine via Stettin, which was widely distributed within the Hanseatic area. This is evidenced by a legal regulation of the Hanseatic League, which was passed after the Lübeck Hanseatic Convention of 1383. Various cities had complained about the small size of the “pipen” of “Gobin’s wine”, i.e. the drain petcocks on the wine casks.^[6] The representatives of the Hanseatic cities present in Lübeck then agreed to send letters to Frankfurt (Oder), Guben and Crossen (Krosno Odrzańskie) requesting that the petcocks be left at their conventional size. How this dispute was resolved cannot be identified.

Fig. 2: The church of the former Benedictine monastery of Guben. By means of a protective alliance with the lords of Cottbus, the citizens of Guben also supported the monastery in front of the old town of Guben, in addition to the monastery of Neuzelle.

Despite constantly changing rulers in the margravial office of late medieval Lower Lusatia[7], the Guben council strove to preserve the city rights granted to it. One of the primary demands was that the town should not be separated from the margraviate, and Margrave Dietrich the Younger issued a decree to this effect in 1298.[8] Just a little later, however, Lower Lusatia was sold to the Archbishopric of Magdeburg in 1301, so that in 1304 Guben appealed to Archbishop Burchard for confirmation of all rights.[9] However, the archbishop was not able to keep possession of Lower Lusatia. Instead, it went to the Margraves of Brandenburg. The Guben council had to seek confirmation of its rights again, which Margrave Hermann of Brandenburg finally provided in 1306. He added to his privilege the remark that all those rights of Guben that were in written form should never be infringed by him or his successors.[10] At the same time, his persistent efforts to preserve rights secured the status of the Guben council as a sovereign town. This deserves special attention since during the 14th century, Lower Lusatia fell to various dynasties in short periods of time, which meant that the Guben citizenry was certainly faced with the threat of a gradual loss of rights.

For this reason, the Guben council did not rely solely on the confirmation of its rights by sovereigns but also sought alliances with other towns, even beyond the borders of Lower Lusatia. In 1321, for example, Guben joined a coalition of margravian towns for mutual legal protection, which had been concluded after the extinction of the Brandenburg Ascanians.[11] The Guben council also sought alliance partners in the immediate vicinity, such as the lords Johann and Richard von Cottbus, who promised to protect the town of Guben in all its rights in 1319. This also included the deployment of armed “Mannen” (“men”) who, in the event of danger, were also to provide assistance to the monasteries of Guben and Neuzelle. In addition, it was mutually agreed to coordinate the allegiance to a new lord of Lower Lusatia. This was to be discussed by an eight-member committee, in which the Guben Schultheiss (sheriff or town mayor) Johan took part, among others.[12] In this way, Guben’s urban autonomy gained in the 14th century becomes evident, which led to a self-confident appropriation of rights that were usually exercised by the margraves.

Fig. 3: Town hall and town church in Gubin/Guben. A German-Polish support association has dedicated itself to the reconstruction of the late Gothic town church, which was severely damaged in the Second World War.

Within this temporal period, the Guben council had also consolidated its position vis-à-vis its own townspeople, as is illustrated by a privilege granted by Duke Johann von Görlitz in 1384. Referring to a legal act of his father Karl IV, and at the request of the Guben councilors, Johann confirmed the city’s free election of councilors. According to this, the people of Guben should “jn yrre stat kysen vnd welen” (“choose and elect”) “ebare vnd och wiczczige” (“honorable and also knowledgeable”) persons. The citizens were requested by the duke to submit to the instructions of this elected council without “all wedirrede” (“any contradiction”) and under threat of severe princely disgrace in case of violations. The council thus received confirmation of its arbitrary right, which was to be exercised in the interest of the common good (“der stat czu eren vnd czu nuccze”, “in honor and benefit of the town”).[13] With this formulation, the duke made recourse to a topos that was widespread in the Middle Ages and that immanently determined the self-image of municipal government.

Author: Sascha Bütow

Citation:

Sascha Bütow: Gubin / Guben. A Market Town of Magdeburg Character on the Neisse River, 21.12.2021, https://magdeburg-law.com/historic-city/guben/

Footnotes:

[1] Johann Wilhelm Neumann (reviser), Die Urkunden des Gubener Rathsarchives, in Neues Lausitzisches Archiv, vol. 36 (1860), pp. 35-71, here p. 36.

[2] Konrad Wutke (ed.), Die schlesische Oderschiffahrt in vorpreußischer Zeit. Urkunden und Aktenstücke (= Codex Diplomaticus Silesiae 17), Breslau 1896, p. 1.

[3] Johann Georg Lebrecht Wilke (ed.), Ticemannus sive vita illustris Principis Theodoric, Leipzig 1754, Diploma no. CXXI, pp. 151–155, here p. 154.

[4] Cf. Rudolf Lehmann, Fürstenberg, in: Handbuch der historischen Stätten Deutschlands, vol. 10: Berlin und Brandenburg, edited by Gerd Heinrich, Stuttgart 1995³, pp. 192-193, here p. 192. On Guben ibid., pp. 210–214, p. 201.

[5] Adolph Friedrich Riedel (ed.), Codex Diplomaticus Brandenburgensis. Sammlung der Urkunden, Chroniken und sonstigen Quellenschriften für die Geschichte der Mark Brandenburg und ihre Regenten, 41 volumes, Berlin 1838–1869, here vol. 2, 1, no. CCCCLXVIII, p. 382.

[6] Georg Waitz and Karl Koppmann (revisers): Hansetage von 1256-1370, Leipzig 1870, pp. 321-326, here p. 323, no. 266.

[7] In general on this Marek Wejwoda, Spielball mächtiger Nachbarn? »Die Lausitzen« im 14. Jahrhundert, in Die Nieder- und Oberlausitz – Konturen einer Integrationslandschaft, vol. 1: Mittelalter (= Studie zur brandenburgischen und vergleichenden Landesgeschichte 11), edited by Heinz-Dieter Heimann, Klaus Neitmann and Uwe Tresp, Berlin 2013, pp. 191–203.

[8] Same as note 1, p. 39.

[9] Ibid., p. 41.

[10] Ibid., pp. 41-42.

[11] Same as note 5, series B, vol. 1, Berlin 1843, no. 561, p. 467.

[12] Same as note 1, pp. 48–50.

[13] Urkunden zur Geschichte des Herzogs Johann von Görlitz, in Neues Lausitzisches Archiv, vol. 35 (1860), pp. 403–432, here pp. 410-411.

Images:

Fig. 1: zeno.org [public domain]

Fig. 2: wikimedia commons [public domain]

Fig. 3: Wikimedia Commons [Creative Commons 1.0], photo: A. Sawin